The BPW International Commission for Health, in full agreement with the WHO Global NCDs Action Plan 2013-2020 and the “25 by 25” (25% reduction of cardiovascular diseases by 2025), campaigned hard in these last years to fight, through the Red Belt Project, against overweight, obesity ,and sedentarity promoting cardiovascular risk awareness in women and in children to safeguard their future and the future of the world.In actual fact, the last WHO’s call is for action against childhood obesity, almost a pandemia, with 42 million children under the age of 5 overweight or obese in 2013. Several epidemiological studies have confirmed the importance of abdominal circumference and its relationship with height (waist/stature ratio) as an indicator of abdominal fat and cardiovascular risk (the optimal value of this parameter should be equal to or below 0.50), more effective and trusted than Body Mass Index (BMI) which describes the relationship between weight and height without considering the distribution of body fat. The aim of the project is to fight against overweight, obesity and sedentarity and to monitor the waistline-height ratio in order to check the abdominal fat and to prevent future cardio-metabolic diseases in women and children. To meet this goal it’s necessary to invest in health to reduce morbility and disability, to spread knowledge of the multiple causes of female/ children cardiometabolic diseases, to use better and safer indicators for assessment of cardiometabolic risk and to lobby Health care Institutions and Governments to recognize sedentary lifestyle as a disease which, in all ages, has to be cured with the right therapy that is the physical activity. The “Tommy & Ollie for Health” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ8yqUT6PJs ) Project was set up in compliance with the limited resources of the planet and with the ethics in food to have access to healthy food as one of the fundamental rights of mankind.
